Ministers funding LSIPs until at least September

Funding for local skills improvement plans has been confirmed for the next six months, as the sector awaits long-term financial decisions expected at the Spending Review.

Each employer representative body leading England’s 38 local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) has been awarded £100,000 to continue working from April to September.

The Department for Education originally allocated £20 million, or £550,000 per employer representative body, to manage the plans from 2023 to last month.

The government is thought to be planning the commissioning of new LSIPs, with increased input from local mayors and other strategic authorities.

Exactly how much funding will go towards LSIPs from October is understood to be being considered as part of the Spending Review, expected in June this year.

However, in her spring statement last month, the chancellor announced an additional £20 million for LSIPs to “form partnerships between colleges and construction companies.”

A key aim will be increasing the number of teachers with construction experience to “train the next generation of workers.”

Last year, the British Chambers of Commerce urged the previous government to commit to funding until “at least” 2028, to provide businesses with long-term certainty about input into skills training in their areas.

Gareth Thomas, who advises the East Midlands Chamber on developing the LSIP for Leicester and Leicestershire, said he understood there would be a “competitive process” to decide who will deliver the next round of plans.

He added: “This is partly, at least, due to some changes in geographic boundaries, such as Rutland being aligned with Leicester and Leicestershire moving forwards.”

“We understand these will be led by employer representative bodies.

However, in areas with mayoral strategic authorities in place, the approach to be taken will require agreement from the authority.”

“The details of such mechanisms are still to be communicated.”

Thomas warned that while the government can “see the value” in LSIPs, there should be collective agreement that local authorities, mayoral authorities and others should not “duplicate” work when engaging local businesses.

He added: “Collectively, we need to gather the intelligence once and use it to support the development of local growth plans, LSIPs, and work and health plans as they come to fruition.”

The DfE confirmed the £100,000 funding extension but declined to comment further.

T Levels for adults ‘under review’ amid ‘very little interest’

There are no plans to roll out T Levels to adults after a pilot scheme attracted just 14 people, FE Week understands.

Former education secretary Gavin Williamson made an “absolute guarantee” to Parliament in 2020 that the flagship two-year technical qualifications, designed for 16- to 19-year-olds, would be available to adults in the future.

A trial of the idea was launched in 2022 with a target of recruiting 150 adults at 11 FE colleges.

But only 14 were enrolled due to “very little interest.”

The Department for Education hoped to learn “valuable lessons” about supporting adults to access T Levels before a potential wider rollout from September this year.

Final adult education payments to providers for 2022-23, published this week by the DfE, showed three colleges out of the 11 that initially volunteered for the pilot received £97,000 between them, with no further funding allocated the following year.

The DfE told FE Week it was keeping the T Levels for adults idea “under review” while being “focussed on ensuring the programme succeeds for learners.”

Adults prefer ‘intensive’ learning

One principal told FE Week adult students at their college preferred courses tailored for older people and delivered in more “intensive” time frames than T Levels.

Only Exeter College recruited a full group of adult learners – 12 in total – who were taught separately from their 16- to 18-year-old cohort between 2022 and 2024.

They studied the digital production, design, and development pathway.

Principal John Laramy said: “Exeter College did pilot an adult T Level.

“It was a discreet group and the pilot came to an end and was not continued.”

East Sussex College Group (ESCG) recruited only one learner who joined its wider cohort of younger students that year.

A spokesperson said: “East Sussex College opted to be part of the T Level adult pilot in 2022, but this unfortunately attracted very little interest and only one adult T Level student was recruited.

“The T Level funding we retained as part of this pilot covered the programme delivery costs for this one student.”

ESCG’s principal and chief executive Rebecca Conroy previously told FE Week low recruitment was partly due to the small number of subjects offered and the limited time the DfE gave to promote the pilot.

A single rate of £10,000 per learner was available, split over two years, with an additional £1,000 provided for learning support.

TEC Partnership, the third college involved in the pilot and which only claimed £5,000, did not respond to requests for comment.

The adult T Level recruitment and payment figures suggest some of the 14 participants did not complete their course.

No demand

The aim of the pilot was to understand adult learners’ appetites for T Levels and whether any flexibilities would encourage them to enrol.

A DfE spokesperson failed to respond when asked about the findings of an “evaluation” that officials were understood to have made following the pilot.

T Levels gained national attention in recent weeks after the DfE axed three more of the courses due to low demand.

The National Audit Office also last week revealed the enormity of the take-up failure for the qualifications, which are designed to be the technical equivalent to A-levels.

The NAO found that student number forecasts for 16- to 19-year-olds were missed by three quarters – resulting in a near-£700 million spending shortfall.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee warned the DfE it had “much to do” to convince people of T Levels’ “worth as a desirable and valuable” qualification.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 493

Lucy Auchincloss

Director of Operations, Remit Training

Start date: March 2025

Previous Job: Partnership Development Director, Lifetime

Interesting fact: Lucy’s greatest passion is music and especially Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones, both of whom she’s seen live multiple times across 3 continents

Jeremy Kerswell

Chair, Landex

Start date: March 2025

Concurrent Job: Principal & CEO, Plumpton College

Interesting fact: After graduating from Reading Uni, Jeremy worked in a lab in which was the first place to recreate the polio virus this side of the Atlantic

Ben Owen

Start date: March 2025

Vice Principal (Business Growth, Skills and Partnerships), DN Colleges Group

Previous Job: Vice President of Customer Services, Lightcast

Interesting fact: In his spare time, Ben can be usually found either walking the South Yorkshire countryside with his wife and dog or attempting to play golf

It’s not only Leeds and Manchester desperate for demographic boom help, say leaders

News of cash to help two northern cities meet a surge in FE students has prompted pleas to help the rest of the country.

This week, the Department for Education revealed it would hand £10 million each to Leeds City Council and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to help post-16 institutions cope with a demographic bulge of young people.

It also announced £302 million in condition funding ring-fenced for repairing colleges’ “leaky roofs, broken windows and dilapidated buildings.”

But while the capacity funding given to Leeds and Greater Manchester was welcomed by college sector leaders, it is understood England’s seven other core cities are facing high levels of demand due to a “demographic boom.”

‘We need a plan’

Association of Colleges (AoC) deputy chief executive Julian Gravatt said: “With 16-to-18 student numbers having risen by 7 per cent this year and forecast to rise by 5 per cent nationally, the government needs a plan for technical education growth.

“The funds for Leeds and Manchester will help, but there are pressures in other cities and towns across the country.”

The number of 16 to 18-year-olds is estimated to have grown by 230,000, or 13 per cent, between 2017 and 2024. It is projected to increase by a further 110,000, or five per cent, by 2028.

Government capital capacity funding was last released between 2021 and 2023. Around £230 million was shared between 89 colleges and sixth forms with the aim of creating additional capacity by September 2024.

‘Bursting at the seams’

The DfE said Leeds and Greater Manchester got funding this time around based on their levels of demographic growth and college capacity pressure.

Population pressures on education are kept under review, a spokesperson added.

But Sixth Form Colleges Association deputy chief executive James Kewin said: “Many of our members are bursting at the seams, but there is currently no capital funding available to support expansion projects.

“The funding announced for Greater Manchester and Leeds is welcome, but the demographic boom is not limited to those two areas.”

He told FE Week that one of the government’s spending review priorities “should be to create a capital expansion fund for sixth form providers that operates on an annual basis,” adding that the alternative is “cramming more students into already overcrowded classrooms or turning students away.”

Positive development

Colin Booth, chief executive of Luminate Education Group, called the £10 million in funding for Leeds a “positive development” that could go “some way” to tackling rising numbers of young people not in education, employment or training.

He said: “Over recent years, post-16 capacity constraints in Leeds have resulted in growing numbers of young people being unable to access suitable forms of post-16 education.

“The announcement represents forward-thinking investment that could benefit both the local economy and young people right across the city.”

However, he warned funding should be “targeted” at growing capacity for high-demand courses such as level 1 and 2, and some technical courses such as health and care, rather than local sixth forms or other providers offering A-levels.

He said: “In Leeds, there is an oversupply and competition between sixth forms for A-level students.

“But in the most disadvantaged postcodes of Leeds, fewer than half of 16-year-olds are able or want to study A-levels.”

Condition funding

The £302 million in further education college condition allocations (bizarrely, the exact figure given was £301,999,999.98) announced this week will be shared between England’s 179 college groups based on a methodology that takes into account learning hours in the last academic year, space requirements for each subject, modelled non-teaching space, residential space, local construction costs and total expected space.

While the methodology does include apprenticeship delivery, it excludes learning aims such as distance learning, higher education, T Level occupational specialisms or end-point assessments.

Large college groups such as NCG and Capital City College will receive more than £7 million each, while 48 smaller institutions such as Calderdale College and Capel Manor College will get less than £1 million each (see full list at FE Week).

Gravatt said the £302 million investment was a “significant and crucial step” towards improving colleges and praised the DfE for using a formula to allocate funding “for the first time in 20 years.”

Creating ESOL courses isn’t ‘voluntary work’, says tribunal

A London college group has been ordered to pay over £30,000 to a part-time ESOL lecturer for treating her less favourably than full-time workers.

Capital City College (CCC) agreed to compensate Mrs R King who was not paid for developing two English for Speakers of Other Languages courses. Bosses attempted to argue she carried out this extra work “voluntarily”.

King had been an ESOL lecturer at the now-merged College of North East London from 1989 to 2016 when she was made redundant. She then enrolled on an early years teacher training course at University College London (UCL) for two years.

In September 2018 she was hired again by CCC as an hourly paid lecturer in the School of ESOL under a zero-hours contract and is still employed by the college group.

She brought an employment tribunal claim in 2023 for direct age discrimination, less favourable treatment of part-time workers and a breach of her particulars of employment. 

The tribunal found her complaint of less favourable treatment under the part-time workers regulations 2002 was well founded.

In the summer of 2021, King agreed with her manager she would develop two new ESOL courses named “learn to read and write” and “foundation to pre-entry”, but was not paid for the work.

The court found the college “relied” on King creating the curriculum because “no one else did it” and the college subsequently ran the courses.

King claimed she only received three hours’ pay for the extra work but did not specify how much time it took to develop the courses.

The college argued that because King had an interest in phonics for adults and her previous study at UCL, it meant she did the work voluntarily.

The judge threw out the college’s claim, saying it was not a case where King went “off on a frolick [sic] of her own” to create materials of her volition without telling CCC.

“We do not accept that having expertise and skills to do something and having an interest in it makes it voluntary,” the judge wrote.

“The only other aspect was that the claimant was not paid for the duties and it seems she was told she would not be paid. We do not accept that denying payment makes something voluntary that would not be otherwise,” they added.

‘Significant failure of HR’

A claim of age discrimination was brought against the college for not offering King a fractionalised agreement, whereby institutions must offer salaried contracts to hourly paid lecturers if they work 432 or more hours per annum, averaged over three years.

Ultimately, the judge threw out the claim that King was denied a salaried contract because of her age but ruled there was a “significant failure of HR” regarding a lack of communication with hourly paid lecturers over the fractionalisation process.

The report said: “We accept that the decisions about fractionalisation were made around the summer near the end of an academic term so that somebody was fractionalised or given a salary contract during the summer and then came back salaried in September and this may have taken the claimant by surprise.”

Her key duties were to teach, prepare lessons, mark students’ work and attend meetings if required. An hourly paid lecturer was not expected to develop curricula, invigilate or participate in professional development, unlike salaried employees.

King carried out the duties that were not part of her contract between 2021 and 2022, such as providing training sessions to colleagues and taking class trips.

The college accepted these duties were beyond those of an hourly paid lecturer but again argued she was doing the extra work voluntarily.

“We find that these were duties that fell within the duties of the comparator and to that extent were broadly similar,” the report noted.

Overall, the tribunal found King suffered less favourable treatment in relation to pay as her comparator would have been paid for the curriculum duties, and she was not.

The report concluded: “It still remains that the full-time comparator pro rata’d would have received pay for more hours (six hours per week for non-teaching duties) resulting in more pay than the claimant received for carrying out broadly similar duties. It is the non-payment of these six hours per week which is the less favourable treatment relating to pay.”

King will be paid a gross sum of £30,531.58, comprising over £23,000 in basic pay, £1,370 in sick pay and over £6,000 in employer pension contributions.

A CCC spokesperson said: “This matter is being considered through the appropriate legal process. We have no further comment to make.”

Kaplan tops apprenticeship revenue charts as level 7 verdict looms

Kaplan Financial Ltd remains the biggest earning apprenticeship provider despite recording less than a third of the number of starts of a competitor.

Department for Education figures published this week revealed the finance giant generated £51.7 million from levy and non-levy-funded apprenticeships in 2022-23.

Moving up to second place was QA Ltd, which rose three positions from the year before with total revenue of £47.5 million compared to £35.3 million in 2021-22.

Kaplan recruited 5,610 apprentices in 2022-23 and QA enrolled 4,690 – but both were dwarfed by Lifetime Training’s 16,990 starts.

While Lifetime cemented its position as market leader in terms of sheer volume, the provider was the third highest for revenue, generating £45.2 million (full table below).

Kaplan and QA mainly offer apprenticeships that attract higher funding bands than Lifetime. Three quarters of Kaplan’s apprentices are on the level 7 accountancy or taxation professional standard, which attracts maximum funding of £21,000. QA’s apprenticeships are mostly in IT and business, administration and law at advanced and higher levels.

Lifetime Training’s delivery is focused on hospitality, retail and adult care, with many apprenticeships at level 2.

All three providers are judged ‘good’ by Ofsted.

Notably, Multiverse Group Limited, the rapidly growing tech-driven apprenticeship provider founded by Tony Blair’s son Euan Blair, moved up to fourth in the provider earnings rankings.

Founded in 2016 it earned £44.1 million from apprenticeships in 2022-23, up by a huge 54 per cent from £28.7 million in 2021-22 following a shift to higher level programmes.

Multiverse continues to attract national media attention, with a string of outlets reporting this week that the company’s expansion into America and artificial intelligence had boosted turnover but increased losses to £60.5 million.

BPP Professional Education Limited, another major player in the professional services training sector with a large proportion of its apprenticeships being level 7, rounds out the top five. 

The government announced in September it would be asking employers to fund a “significant” number of level 7 apprenticeships themselves, outside of the apprenticeships budget or levy-funded growth and skills offer.

A final decision on which level 7s are in and which are out of scope of levy funding will be made in “due course”, the DfE said this week.

Both BPP Professional and Kaplan Financial are likely to be significantly impacted by the move.

Making up the top 10 in the earnings table in 2022-23 was Corndel Ltd and JTL, alongside public sector bodies of the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, whose presence in the rankings highlights the importance of apprenticeships in military training.

The Open University was the highest earning university, placing 11th with £19.8 million, while the college that generated the most from apprenticeships in 2022-23 was Bridgwater and Taunton College, placing 30th with £11.3 million.

Ofsted looks at renaming new ‘secure’ grade

Ofsted is considering renaming the proposed ‘secure’ grade in its new report cards, although leaders say it won’t be clear where it sits on the new scale, FE Week understands. 

The inspectorate proposes replacing its current four-point grading system with five grades across up to 20 judgment areas. The system is now being piloted and is open to consultation,  

Providers would be given one of five colour-coded judgments for each area, ranging from dark green to red. Under current plans, those would be ‘exemplary’, ‘strong’, ‘secure’, ‘attention needed’ and ‘causing concern’. 

However, although it remains wedded to five grades, Ofsted is now understood to be considering replacing ‘secure’ with another word or phrase. 

FE Week understands the matter was discussed with inspectors by Sir Martyn Oliver, the chief inspector, and Lee Owston, the watchdog’s director of education, at an internal conference last week. 

It follows concerns raised with Ofsted that the meaning of ‘secure’ in the context of rating a school or FE provider is not clear, and it is not obvious where it should sit on the sliding scale. 

Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed Ofsted’s willingness to rethink elements of its proposals, but said it needed “to go much further than simply a change in terminology”. 

Ofsted’s plan for a five-point grading scale was “fundamentally flawed” and risked producing less reliable judgments while putting additional pressure on school and college leaders. 

“The proposed toolkits are wildly open to interpretation, with the distinction between ‘secure’ and ‘strong’ in particular being exceptionally vague in several places,” he said.

Frank Norris, a former senior inspector, said Ofsted was “trying to keep face when actually … the criticism isn’t with the word ‘secure’. 

“How sad that they’re spending time on that word when it’s not that word, it’s the actual structure of the grading system.” 

It comes after Oliver told leaders at the ASCL conference last month that Ofsted was looking at better “defining the differences between grades”. 

Under its proposed new framework, Ofsted has published “inspection toolkits” that break down the requirements schools and FE providers must meet for each of the five grades.

Oliver said the kits aimed to “remove any mystery or guesswork”, helping leaders and teachers “understand each standard in exactly the same way as…inspectors”.

Ofsted is testing the framework with about 240 “visits” to education settings. 

Oliver said there had been positive feedback, “but we are also hearing that we have more to do on defining the differences between grades, particularly between secure and strong”.  

He told ASCL’s conference that clarification work “has begun”. 

Asked if it planned to change the ‘secure’ rating, Ofsted responded: “The consultation is still live. No decisions of this kind have been made.”

The consultation ends on April 28.

Oli de Botton appointed ‘expert adviser’ to Starmer on skills

Oli de Botton, a former headteacher and the chief executive of the Careers and Enterprise Company, has been appointed as prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s “expert adviser on education and skills”.

In a two-line press release issued tonight, Downing Street confirmed the former School 21 head would “advise ministers and drive forward the government’s vision for education and skills”.

Number 10 said de Botton “brings with him extensive experience working in education and skills as a teacher, adviser, headteacher and national CEO”.

A member of the inaugural cohort of Teach First in 2003, de Botton was curriculum lead and later head of School 21, one of the country’s most renowned progressive free schools. He also helped set up Voice 21, its sister charity which champions oracy.

He currently heads the Careers and Enterprise Company, a role he will leave when he starts at Downing Street on April 22.

Yarham steps up… again

John Yarham
John Yarham

John Yarham, the CEC’s deputy CEO, will replace de Botton as interim CEO, and will “take charge of the organisation’s next phase of work to help deliver the government’s manifesto commitment of two weeks’ worth of high-quality work experience for every young person”.

de Botton said it had been an “incredible privilege to be part of The Careers and Enterprise Company’s work, collaborating with partners across the country to build and sustain a careers system that helps more young people, particularly those who face barriers. In this shared endeavour, we can see progress, but there remains lots more to do.

“I will continue my work in public service anchored in education and skills and will always champion the importance of helping every young person find their best next step.”

CEC chair Baroness Morgan said under his leadership, “we have been able to galvanise powerful collaboration between education, business and key local partners to deliver a dynamic careers system across England.

“It means schools, colleges, employers and careers providers can work together in a more coordinated and structured way to offer excellent careers support for all young people.”

Access to HE: a life changing qualification hiding in plain sight

I wasn’t fully aware what the Access to HE qualification was when I joined an access validating agency seven years ago to develop and approve Access to HE courses. 

My ignorance still niggles me today, because I know now it’s a qualification that truly changes lives. 

The qualification began in the 1970s, when coal mines and steel works were closing and people needed a new start. 

The government introduced Access to HE to encourage individuals from diverse backgrounds to enter teacher training. 

It was created for those who had missed out on the traditional route to university – maybe due to family challenges, health issues, or life throwing a curveball. 

It’s often described as the best-kept secret in the sector, a hidden gem – I really wish it wasn’t so hidden. But I think providers could change that. 

So I’m asking the sector to look again at Access to HE, how we support learners, how it can be delivered to more learners, and how we explain its amazing value. 

These learners aren’t your typical students. They’re a diverse group, often facing family challenges, health-related issues, or sometimes unimaginable experiences like fleeing their home country due to religious persecution. 

I appreciate that retention rates can be a worry. A third of Access to HE students are still withdrawing before day 42 of their course, usually due to life challenges and not knowing what support is out there.  

Learners need to know that support is available, and how the flexibility of Access to HE programmes allows them to catch up, rather than withdraw.

Promoting this effectively and reminding learners of it consistently can encourage more learners to stay the course. 

Another challenge is explaining the loan offer which is actually really good. 

Too many learners hear the word ‘loan’ and see it as a barrier. I know the mere mention of a loan puts many people off. With living costs rising they worry about taking debt on. But it’s important they understand that it’s fully written off if they complete a degree. And if they don’t, they don’t pay a penny back until they’re earning over £27,295 a year. 

The way Access to HE is delivered is an important consideration – a blended approach is the best option in my view. 

In our modern online world, e-learning is useful – it fits busy lives, and during Covid numbers spiked as more people studied at home. But in my experience, Access to HE learners flourish from the peer support they get from other Access to HE students, and the time and connections they have with their tutors.

So why does all this matter? Access to HE is truly life-changing – I have seen so many examples of lives being changed for the better. And the stats evidence that these learners stay in higher education and do better than those from other Level 3 routes. 

Another impressive statistic is that 90 per cent of graduates with an Access to HE diploma are in work or further study within six months of graduation.

Access to HE offers people an opportunity to get higher-paid work or enter exciting careers and all of the knock-on benefits that brings for their families. 

But if the sector doesn’t do more to raise its profile, I fear that Access to HE participation will decline.

I still don’t know why it’s not talked about as much as other options out there in the market, such as A-levels and apprenticeships. But I’m asking providers to look at raising Access to HE’s profile so more people know what it can achieve.

If we can help give more learners opportunities they thought were out of reach, then it’s worth real effort.